N is for Night - Part 2

N is for Night - Part 2

N is for Night - Part 1

N is for Night

Part 1

For this week we covered the topics of Day & Night (how do we get day & night) & Nocturnal Animals.

We did some great crafts again. For some of the crafts this week I have included a photo of the book page we got our art creativity from. I believe it really helps to pinpoint where your picture has come from when doing art & presenting art.

I got very excited during this week as I was able to teach Seychelle many different techniques of art/painting (from splatter paintings to mosaics).

Here is a photo of our discussing (using props) what causes Day & Night & how incredible it is that our planet is positioned in such a perfect place.  If our planet was just a fraction closer or further away from the sun then we would not have life on earth.

God is truly amazing that He designed us and our planet with such precision & perfection. When you look at the universe it is just so immense, we are so insignificant and small in such a huge place. 

It simply points us to what an almighty & incredible Creator we have.

Yet the God of the universe (who is in charge of everything in that huge vast space),

knows each of us intimately & desires to have a real & beautiful relationship with us.

I am truly humbled & honoured to know Him.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be."

Psalm 139:13-16

Seychelle's splatter paintings of the universe/space - Night Sky.

To introduce the lesson we spoke during the day about what we would expect to see in the sky at night. 

We then let her stay up a little bit later that night while we all sat outside looking up at the night sky. Where we live in the Cook Islands, the night sky is simply spectacular! We see so many more stars and with much more clarity & definition. Words just can't describe just how beautiful it is.  We are thankful to God for giving us such a beautiful display of His power & glory.

 

Letter R (Part 3)

To complete our fun week with the Letter R, Seychelle had some free time to do painting & we made some more Rabbit crafts, including one of a Rooster. Living in the Rarotonga we are completely surrounded by roosters, so it felt simply unfair to exclude them in this week's crafts.

So....we had great fun making a rooster too!

Letter R (Part 2)

This week part of our topic included discussing & playing a game about 'Feelings'.

This was lots of fun!
I used this lesson right after we had read the book, 'Guess How Much I Love You'.

The book briefly introduced the feeling of Love.  We briefly chatted about Love and how you can show someone you love them.

Letter R (Part 1)

This week we did the Letter R. Our topic was R is for Rabbit (& we also included an R is for Rooster craft).
We also spoke about 'Feelings' & what they are.

For 'R is for Rabbit', we had grand plans to read through a number of books (The Little Rabbit, The Velveteen Rabbit, Guess How Much I Love You & Peter Rabbit). BUT a new baby goat was born next door, so our plans were narrowed down to make room for spending time and observing the new baby kid. 

We started the week reading the book, The Little Rabbit.

Anatomy of a Rabbit
We spoke about the different parts of a rabbit - the long ears, pink nose, eyes (on the sides of the head, not the front) & legs (back legs are longer then the front legs).

Role Play
I put on some fun bouncing music & Seychelle dressed up like a bunny with some bunny ears from the dress up box.  She then played the part of a Rabbit, bouncing around all over the room & mimicking the different movements a Rabbit does: Nose twitching, sitting upright with her hands like a rabbits' & moving her head from side to side inquisitively. She had lots of fun with this!

We did a few Rabbit crafts this week.

Letter B

Here is a summary of our crafts for this week - The Letter B

 
 

The Letter B (Part 4)

Continuing our with our Letter B adventures from Letter B (Part 3)

We ended off this week with the most wonderful craft. The weekend before we had a whole lot of fun looking on the beach for some shells which I had planned to use for this craft.

For the flowers: We used pipe cleaners for the grass, stem and leaves of the flowers, buttons for the flower centres and tissue paper for the petals.

We used shells for the butterfly wings & pipe cleaners for the body.

The photos show the different stages of the creation. Enjoy :)

The Letter B (Part 3)

Continuing on from The Letter B (Part 2)

Today we started off with reading the Hungry Caterpillar again. We recapped over the stages of the life cycle & then Seychelle acted out the scenes of the book.

We only had a few props available but Seychelle had so much fun acting out the caterpillar. This was the highlight of her week :)

 

(The second is Seychelle as a caterpillar in a cocoon).

Then we played a few games using the theme of the book.

The first game was sorting out the the days of the week into the correct order & then assigning the right number of fruit to that day (of course including Saturday being the day he ate all the junk food).

We then played another game.  This was a matching game - Seychelle had to try and read the sentence (with my help) that corresponded with the correct picture. The game was about the life cycle of the butterfly and a good summary and test to see whether she knew the stages correctly. She did very well!



 We ended the day off with doing a quick and easy butterfly craft using a paper plate & a toilet roll.

The Letter B (Part 2)

Midweek we starting reading the book - The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

We talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly again The Letter B (Part 1) - using a flow chart that I had made written up the weekend before.

After reading the book we the moved onto discussing healthy food verus unhealthy food (junk food). Using the book we talked about why the caterpillar had a tummyache (after eating too much junk food) & why he felt better after eating a green leaf (healthy food).

I have a pack of food photo cards. We spread them all out over the floor & Seychelle had to name each type of food and work out whether it was healthy or unhealthy. She grouped them accordingly.




                                                    

I then got a couple of magazines & Seychelle looked through the mags finding pictures of either healthy or unhealthy food.

                                                     

While Seychelle was doing this fun activity I played the audio CD of The Hungry Caterpillar. (It came with the book we purchased & I highly recommend it).

We did painting today. This one was a caterpillar. We used X3 paper plates and I got Seychelle to choose the designs for each (she copied an example we found on the net) & then I modelled to her how to paint those designs. She loved this painting!

  

              

The Letter B (Part 1)

This week we did the Letter B. Our topic was Butterflies.

We had a lot of fun this week! Loads of crafts as usual and we also got to include other fun activities that fitted into the theme.

To start the week off we got out a 4 layer puzzle on the life cycle of a caterpillar. It is a great puzzle and starts off with the first layer  - the tiny caterpillar and ends with the last layer - a beautiful big butterfly.
I used this puzzle to introduce this week's topic.



After the puzzle I read Seychelle the book, Life Cycles: Caterpillar to Butterfly. We spent some time going through each page discussing the amazing journey the tiny caterpillar makes into becoming a beautiful butterfly! What an amazing creation God made.

The first butterfly craft we did was a beautiful colourful paper tissue butterfly. I printed out an A4 size butterfly picture (courtesy of a google search for colouring in pages), then we "planned" out which colours we were going to use. Then we started ripping up pieces of different coloured tissue paper.

 

We made another Letter B - made up of bubblewrap, with butterfly wings.



The Letter P

This week's letter is P. Our topics were both Pineapples & Pigs.  Both are really great topics for us living in Rarotonga. Our neighbour grows pineapples & we are surrounded by pigs.

Our pineapple craft has been my personal favourite this year so far. It is really bright & colourful and easy to do.

 

This was a very easy craft. We drew an outline of a pineapple on the paper. Then we used polystyrene fillers, painted them orange, yellow and a light orange. We then used cardboard for the the leaves. Seychelle & I made one pineapple together & then she did one all on her own!

Alphabet Tree

Our homeschooling is generally centred around a Letter of the Week.

The Letter D

This week we are doing the Letter D. 

Our topic is Guide Dogs.

The Letter T

This week we did the Letter T. Our topic for the week was Turtles.